"Subject: RE: Folk Club Manners
From: GUEST,James H - PM

Piers,

well done you for having such a single minded approach. If that is what works for you, go for it.

Doesn't mean that's what works for everybody though, surely?"

(And in response to other postings)

Yes, people do more than one thing at the same time. The point of the story about Milt Kahl and Richard Williams is that one does one's best work when one concentrates on one thing at a time. I have found this to be confirmed in my own work. It's just a piece of advice, one can take it or leave it.

Richard Bridge, I play the guitar and sing at the same time, and I also play the guitar and the harmonica at the same time. If I could figure out how, I would do all three at once. It is a compromise. Life is full of compromises. I can play more complicated things if I'm not singing, and I can certainly sing better if I didn't play the guitar, because I play a classical guitar seated and one doesn't really sing well seated. I don't really practice singing anymore because of physical problems with my voice, but I love songs.

The consequences of eating and reading the newspaper at the same time are usually not serious (though the printer's ink may not taste very good). The consequences of not paying enough attention while driving can be fatal. One can twist and turn and justify and relativize all one wants, but there are traffic fatalities every day. One is free to do with this information what one will; I've said all I can think of on this subject.

I was rather annoyed about the quote from Seung Sahn, which I looked up and found in the internet. I could imagine that it was meant facetiously, as a rueful admissions that he had been caught out not practicing what he preached. However it was meant, I think it's likely to confuse people and not promote their practice of Zen. Yes, I sometimes do two things at once, without paying proper attention to either. Yes, I live in the real world and not a Zen monastery. However, if anyone is interested in my opinion on this subject, I don't think it's a good idea to do two things at once and call it "practicing mindfulness". One would only be fooling oneself.

As far as the (in my opinion, annoyingly trendy) expression "multitasking" (a.k.a. "multishirking") is concerned, I am a computer programmer and what multitasking means on a system with a single processor is that the multiple tasks are performed successively, but only one at a time. True multitasking can only take place on a system with more than one processor. There, multiple tasks can really be performed simultaneously. There is a significant overhead involved in a multitasking application. Lecture on POSIX threads and UNIX system calls available upon request. For a person, I think "multitasking" comes with a considerable cost, too. In life, one often has to concentrate on more than one thing at a time. It's not really conducive to doing one's very best work, though.